On Thu, 2005-08-18 at 14:31 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote: > On Thu, 2005-08-18 at 13:40, Mike McCarty wrote: > > Ralf Corsepius wrote: > > > > > Your uids/gids seem out of sync between client and server, i.e. you need > > > to synchronize your client's and server's uid/gid system (c.f. > > > nsswitch.conf). > > > > > > I.e. you typically will have to synchonize /etc/passwd and /etc/groups > > > and might want to add a network wide passwd/groups system, such as > > > nis/yp. > > > > Since you seem knowledgeable, and since this seems to be right > > up the alley for this thread, I'd like some advice... I wouldn't claim to be a NIS/YP/NFS expert, but ... > > I do contract work at home. I have no real LAN, just one manchine. > > But when on occasion I need to go to the office which employs me > > we hook up. We do not have synchronized UIDs. I obviously don't > > want to use NIS at home (or do I?). It depends. I have a local network at home and use NIS+autofs to share files between machines. IMO, it's less a matter of "home vs. office" usage, but more a matter of "standalone vs. networked" usage. IMO, everybody having a network, no matter where, sooner or later will want to use NIS or the like (there exit alternatives) and autofs/amd/automount. > > Yet, when at their office, > > I can't just use NFS to transfer files from my machines to theirs. > > I have to use FTP in order to get the UID correct on their machine. When working as ordinary user, then this all here shouldn't be a problem. > If it's an infrequent thing, use: > rsync -essh localfile... user@remote_host:/path/to/destination > or the reverse so you can control the user ids at both ends. But beware of "system accounts". Traditionally, you only sync "user accounts" because they are shared between machines in a network, while "system accounts" are treated as "machine local account" and therefore are allowed to diverge on different machines. I.e. if using simple mirroring of /etc/passwd and /etc/group, you have to take special care about not breaking local accounts, which means, in most cases simple mirroring will not be enough, you'd have to compose or filter the files. When using NIS/yp, the NIS/yp tools automatically do this for you (The server's /var/yp/Makefile filters when generating the nis-maps, the client's nsswitch re-composes at run-time). > With appropriate options, rsync will recurse through directories > and it only copies things that aren't already there. Ralf
